Beauty and the 3geeks
Episode 1; Set-Up
Hello there,
I’m Ashlee Harrison and I started university at the “mature”
age of 21, I place mature in inverted commas because three years ago I thought
I was mature and too old to be commencing university for the first time. However,
now I look back (a little wiser) and realise that I have so much more to learn.
Looking back I am not sure how I ever thought I was too “mature” to be starting
this adventure called full time study without compromising on my work
commitments.
I have a career history that has been heavily focused on
sales, real estate and marketing and in more recent years I have taken a detour
into Public Relations (which I find is a glamorous version of sales in a way)
and I am loving it. I have also spent the last four years starting and
operating a local Perth charity; zero2hero,
we focus on suicide prevention and increasing the awareness of suicide and depression
in WA. I share all of this information so that you have the context from my choice
of role for my PR Placement.
I have worked in a few different PR capacities, mainly
through consulting, and have also co-ordinated many client functions and events
over the past three years and when confronted with this placement noticed that
nothing I had ever done before was going to quite cut it for both the PR
Placement and also the beginning of my future career endeavours.
Therefore, I chose to commence my placement simultaneously with
the new position as Social Media Manager at a digital agency; 3geeks. 3geeks
offer a HUGE range of services for any business in both online and offline
marketing. I was approached earlier this year to head up their social media
division, as this was previously a service the agency had to outsource. The
role of social media manager includes; social media monitoring, channel
implementation and set-up, account management and also prospecting. When I
first accepted the challenge I wasn’t sure how it would look but knew it was a
position and opportunity that I was ready to take.
In my first week with the company I drew on many skills that
I have acquired during the years of both running zero2hero and also my PR and marketing units. I was required to
prepare a presentation to pitch to a prospective client; this included the
brief and written proposal…. Finally!!! I was using a document I had been asked
to produce so many times as an assignment. There are definitely similarities
between the documents used in the ‘real world’ and those we are taught to do at
University however there are also some big differences.
As a digital agency specialising in marketing and
advertising it is essential that what we produce is fully aligned with the
3geeks brand. My first power-point presentation would have been of a high
calibre ie: well researched, easy to follow and overall a convincing pitch however
it was definitely not at the same level of work that 3 geeks produce and was
not in line with their brand therefore it was back to the drawing board. My
manager was great at working through this with me and he definitely has a
creative mind that can cut through the crap, which I enjoy working with.
Over the first week my main task was to set-up several
standard documents required for any standard social media campaign and also review
the content for social media on their NEW website. In doing this I found that I
needed to complete a lot of work on my own personal social media sites as these
weren’t up to date and no longer promoted me and what I am now up to. This then
meant I had to conduct a complete overhaul on all of my personal social media pages…
1.
Tumblr
2.
Facebook
3.
Pinterest
4.
Linkedin
5.
Twitter
6.
Youtube
7.
Google+
8.
Instagram
Just to name a few ;) a couple of those I didn’t even use or
see the point of until I started researching the numbers of people utilising
any one channel and the opportunity it is to understand each of them when I am
advising my clients. This meant I needed to research, edit and align my pages
according to the target market, sounding familiar? It definitely was.
So in my first week the focus was getting ready and laying a
solid foundation. Next task was to build something on it.
Final thought: I must keep a password log.
Regards,
